Taxpayers are pumping millions into ‘virtue-signalling’ projects instead of genuine ‘humanitarian relief’, critics of Britain’s foreign aid spending claim.
In the second-part of MailOnline’s damning investigation laying bare the extraordinary scale of the UK’s ‘wasted’ budget, we have built a search tool listing all 3,250 programmes where Government aid projects are still classified as ‘active’.
It also reveals hundreds of schemes have seemingly overspent, with some listed as being almost 15,000 per cent over budget.
One example which has irritated MPs and experts alike is a four-year medical study investigating ways to ‘prevent diabetic foot ulcers in Peru’. That scheme, originally budgeted £175,000, has already racked up nearly half a million pounds in costs.
Another scheme that has sparked outrage is the Education, Justice and Memory Network (EdJAM), which ran for four years between 2020-24 in Pakistan. It aimed to educate the people of Pakistan on the country’s violent past through ‘innovative practices for teaching and learning’. The scheme ran £3.6m over its £1.8m budget.
William Yarwood, media campaign manager at the TaxPayer’s Alliance, told MailOnline: ‘Brits are sick of ministers throwing their money at foreign aid projects that do nothing but tick trendy boxes.
‘More often than not, what’s being funded isn’t humanitarian relief but a taxpayer-funded exercise in virtue signalling.
‘The government needs to stop this madness and use this money at home where it’s most needed.’
In total, Britain gave £15.3bn towards foreign aid 2023/24.
But MailOnline’s analysis only looks at £2.1bn of the UK’s official development assistance (ODA) – otherwise known as our foreign aid budget.
This is because the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) only publishes a fraction of the nation-specific programmes the UK funds.
It means exactly where the other billions went will remain a mystery until the receipts for 2024/25 are counted up and published this autumn.
There is no shortage of questionable, taxpayer-bankrolled aid projects in recent years.
Some, such as a quarter of a million pound tranche for ‘culturally sensitive mental health and wellbeing services’ for the Kankuamo people of Colombia ran £50,000 over budget.
Others continue to overshoot by a lot more.
The ‘Country and Regional Grants and Fellowships Programme’ for the Fleming Fund – dedicated to fighting drug resistance – is the most over-budget project under the whole FCDO banner.
Launched in 2016, and due to end on March 31, 2025, the initial £67million pricetag has run up to £211.2million.
The project seeks to explore antimcrobial resistance across West, East and Southern Africa and is being run exclusively by Croydon-based management consultancy firm, Mott Macdonald.
Elsewhere, Malaysia, a country whose GDP per capita is higher than over 100 UK local authorities, is the recipient of a renewable energy grant from the UK’s self-described innovation agency, Innovate UK.
Despite a project budget of £0 between May 2024 and April 2026, the scheme has already run up £131,291 in costs and is less than half way to completion.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a whopping £15million from British taxpayers will go towards improving the facilities and crossing protocol at the country’s border with Uganda.
A handful of projects ran by the Met Office Newton Fund, originally budgeted to be just over £140,000, have since racked up bills exceeding £21m.
It comes after MailOnline revealed how nearly a third of the budget is being swallowed by hosting asylum seekers and refugees in Britain.
Close to £4.3bn was spent on so-called ‘in donor refugee costs’ in 2023 – a nine-fold rise since before Covid, reflecting the soaring toll of small boat crossings.
Up to £8.2m per day goes towards accommodation for asylum seekers, with the rest of the pot divided towards education, health and other social needs.
Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham, said the spend on in-house migrants represented one of the worst fiscal judgements from the Home Office.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) watchdog, which scrutinises the UK’s official development assistance (ODA) – or overseas aid budget, warns vital projects will inevitably be canned unless the government slashes the bill.
The UK allocated just £2.7bn directly to specific countries in bilateral aid in 2023 – down from £5.9bn in 2019.
The ICAI said the cut was ‘heavily impacted by budget reductions and rising in-donor refugee costs’.
Labour has vowed to slash the ODA pot to just 0.3 per cent of GNI by 2027, under plans to save in excess of £6bn that year alone.
This will all instead be pumped into defence spending to bolster Britain’s military might should tensions with Russia boil over into a full-blown conflict.
An FCDO spokesperson said: ‘We are committed to modernising our approach with less money: working with our partners in new ways to maximise our impact.
‘These latest changes to the ODA budget will give greater certainty and stability, helping us provide the best value for money for taxpayers.
‘The UK ODA budget will be gradually reduced from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent GNI by 2027/28, in order to fund a necessary increase in defence spending.
‘To enable us to deliver this change effectively, we are maximising our flexibility by focusing on meeting legally binding commitments and delivering work already underway, while continuing to play a key humanitarian role in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.
‘Our development spending is a strategic investment that contributes to a safer, more prosperous UK. Global challenges like conflict, the climate crisis and poverty directly affect British lives, through irregular migration pressures, reduced trading opportunities and threats to our national security.’
